REFORMS IN THE FISHERIES OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 299 



AVOIDABLE FISH-SPOILING THROUGH CARELESSNESS, FILTH, AND BAD PACKING. 



Placed upon their bellies on the usually filthy boards at the bottom of the smack, 

 the abdomen of the fish may rot whilst its sides and back remain comparatively 

 sound. In the United Kingdom captured fish are often thrown unbled and ungutted, 

 and always unpithed, into the more or less foul hold of the fishing boat, where they 

 remain exposed to successive alterations of heat, sunshine, moist and melting ice, and 

 putrefactive filth. The fish are frequently ruthlessly crushed, bruised, and cut by 

 the heavy weights of their thoughtless captors standing in sharp-nailed boots, whilst 

 the lower layers of fish may have tons of fish resting upon them. In some parts of 

 England, from about September till April, many of the smacks fish by themselves, 

 and not in a fleet from which a steamer or other carrier takes away each day's fish. 

 As such isolated smacks stay out at sea about a week, it follows that a portion of 

 their catch has been already some six days in ice before landing. Such stale fish by 

 putrefactive contagion damage the fish more recently caught. On reaching the har- 

 bor the fish are commonly pressed into filthy fish boxes, barrels, and baskets pregnant 

 with putrefactive bacteria. The fish suffer further shaking, banging, and bruising 

 by being flung about on the pier, where this food lies again exposed to heat, rain, 

 and sunshine. As the fish boxes or trunks have always wide-open apertures, and in 

 the carrying boats and railway and street vans the boxes are closely piled one above 

 the other, it follows that the flowing filth from the upper boxes circulates through the 

 lower ones, whilst the last tier, both from above and below, is surrounded with these 

 putrefactive abominations. 



Fish are, again, further damaged by close packing and pressure. To economize 

 space in packing the barrels a sharp sudden wrench or twist bends the fish into a 

 cod, breaking up the animal's softened muscles and structures, thereby inviting and 

 increasing putrefaction. Finally, such fish are tightly crammed into rough, porous, 

 unvarnished, foul boxes and barrels, which are rudely closed by sharp hammering. 



The practice of suddenly twisting the tail of the whiting, and passing it through its 

 month or through the sockets whence the eyes have been removed, ruptures the soft, 

 flabby, loose, muscular fibers, especially when such fish have been previously skinned. 

 The exposure of dead fish thus wastefully maltreated in fishmonger's shops, pregnant 

 with putrefactive bacteria, accelerates decomposition. 



When fish has once become flabby, stale, or tainted no preservative process can 

 possibly restore its lost flavor, freshness, or firmness. 



The fish which British fishermen occasionally gut are often to be seen placed in a. 

 few inches of stagnant water supersaturated with putrid blood and filth. Frequently 

 handling fish, especially with dirty hands, accelerates putrefaction, as also the time- 

 honored custom of watering fish on the fishmonger's slab. By a statute of Edward I., 

 dated 1272, no fishmonger was allowed to water his fish more than once; no fresh fish 

 was to be kept in London beyond the second day from its capture ; nor was any bad 

 fish to be sold. The profit of the London fishmonger was limited by this statute to 

 one penny in the shilling. 



Fisherfolk so fully realize the present difficulty of preserving fish that stale and 

 decomposed fish is technically termed "overday" (over-a-day) fish. Fisherfolk say 

 that thunderstorms spoil fish, but as thunderstorms occur chiefly in hot, still weather, 

 associated with rain, the explanation is included in the fact that fish decompose 



